Double Dhamaal

This was the official website for Double Dhamaal a Bollywood comaedy film and a sequel to the 2007 hit film Dhamaal, and the second installment of Dhamaal film.
Content is from the site's archived pages as well as other outside sources.

The four good-for- nothing jokers from Dhamaal - Roy (Riteish Deshmukh), Manav (Jaaved Jaafery) Adi (Arshad Warsi) and Boman (Ashish Chowdhry) are back again! They are still as stupid and useless as before. Hard work is a strict no no and the only work they have ever done in their lives is to lie down on their backsides and dream about a good life where they have everything without doing anything! And then suddenly they see their old arch enemy - the corrupt Inspector Kabir (Sanjay Dutt). But he's no longer a cop and instead of chasing crooks, he's chasing money - driving a Merc and has a posh office and a lavish villa. The four madcaps are green with envy and decide that come what may, by hook or by crook they will share Kabir's good fortune. And so they blackmail Kabir into making them his business partners. They are in seventh heaven, yippee, all their dreams are coming true. What they don't know is that soon their dreams are going to turn into nightmares because Kabir has his own hidden agenda, only shared by his sultry wife Kamini (Mallika Sherawat) and lovely sister Kiya (Kangna Ranaut).

And so starts a game of one- up- manship, with both sides having tricks up their sleeves and where sundry characters like bhai turned sadhu - Batabhai (Satish Kaushik) and King of Casinos Johnny Bonzola, turn up to make the foursome's life miserable.
And of course there's a helluva lot of money at stake. There are also lots of twists and turns and a bellyful of laughs. But who will have the last laugh? Canny Kabir or our four loveable jokers?

TOMATOMETER
CRITICS 20% | AUDIENCE 24%

June 27, 2011 | Rating: 2/5
Rachel Saltz New York Times Top Critic

It turns out you can kid a kidder, and it’s easy to fool a fool. What about four fools? There’s no safety in numbers, certainly not in “Double Dhamaal,” a mind-contracting Hindi comedy that seems to take its cues from the Three Stooges, the Keystone Kops and every Bollywood cliché it can chew up and spit back as farce.

If that sounds appealing, be warned: Unless your idea of a good joke is a golf ball thwacked into an unsuspecting crotch or the old frying-pan-in-the-kisser gag, you probably won’t like this movie.

“Double Dhamaal” (a sequel to 2007’s “Dhamaal”) stars Sanjay Dutt as Kabir, a con-man-businessman who matches wits (as it were) with four bumbling fools (Arshad Warsi, Riteish Deshmukh, Ashish Chowdhry and Jaaved Jaafery, all mugging wildly). There are lots of hard-to-follow doings, but things take off after Kabir tricks the fools into thinking that they’ve discovered oil in Mumbai. (No dice. Their gusher is a sewage pipe.) Somehow everyone ends up in Macau, where Kabir opens a casino called the Four Jokers. Out for revenge, the fools try to ruin him.

This corner of the Bollywood universe has no room for political correctness, as is made clear by the fools’ rainbow coalition of ethnic disguises. The worst is Mr. Deshmukh’s drawn-out turn in black face, which gives rise to at least one unforgivably racist joke. (The official Web site’s description of the disguises is clueless too.)

++++

June 27, 2011 | Rating: 3/5
Kevin Thomas Los Angeles Times Top Critic

The silly Bollywood sequel about four goofy and unemployed men may be wearying for some at 138 minutes, but the broad jokes hurtle along at a fast clip with boundless good nature.

"Double Dhamaal" — "Fun" in Hindi — features four goofy unemployed guys so desperate to strike it rich they will do just about anything to grab some cash. They are Adi (Arshad Warsi), Manav (Jaaved Jaaferi), Roy (Riteish Deshmukh) and Boman (Ashish Chowdhry), and they could easily be called the Four Stooges. The four hard-working comedians, director Indra Kumar and writer Tushar Hiranandani are awe-inspiring in their sheer stamina and seemingly inexhaustible energy in sustaining a 138-minute running time that by Hollywood standards is about 50 minutes too long for comedy but is typical for Bollywood.

The film is amiably silly, gaudy and even pleasantly diverting for the non-Hindi-speaking viewer who realizes that the verbal gags that elicited laughter in the original language tend to elude translation via English subtitles. The comedy, however, is also heavy on slapstick, pratfalls and crazy disguises.

At any rate, the doofus quartet is somehow acquainted with Kabir (Sanjay Dutt), a rugged-looking, middle-aged and decidedly shady Mumbai tycoon who pretends to take them on as investors in a fake oil field scheme in order to set them up to ensnare and bilk a rich, phony preacher. That's barely the beginning of the nonstop shenanigans and adventures, which eventually proceed to Macao, where Kabir has just bought a fancy casino. He also has two gorgeous girlfriends, Kamini (Mallika Sherawat) and Kiya (Kangna Ranaut), who eventually provide love interest for two of the stooges.

"Double Dhamaal" — the first "Dhamaal" came out two years ago — may be wearying for some viewers, but crazy, cockamamie incidents, some of them inventive, hurtle along at a fast clip with considerable bounciness and boundless good nature. The obligatory musical numbers are cleverly framed as the various characters' daydreams and never interrupt the film's steady pacing. In its extremely broad humor, "Double Dhamaal" is, for the most part, fun.

+++

June 24, 2011
Maitland McDonagh Film Journal International

In Dhamaal (“fun” in Hindi), four friends—disinherited rich boy Boman (former model Ashish Chowdhry); brothers Aditya (Arshad Warsi) and Manav (Jaaved Jaaferi), the former a hothead and the latter an idiot; and Roy (Riteish Deshmukh), who’s clever without being the least bit smart—go to the aid of a car-crash victim whose dying words send them on a mad scramble to recover the small fortune he buried somewhere in Goa’s St. Sebastian Park. Once there, they cross paths with disillusioned police officer Kabir Naik (troubled Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt), who’s also after the money; after much wackiness, the cash winds up being donated to a televised children’s charity.

Double Dhamaal, which reunites the first movie's principal cast, opens two years later: Roy, Boman, Aditya and Manav are broke and it’s finally dawning on them that waiting for another billionaire to have a car accident and make them rich isn’t panning out. Kabir, on the other hand, appears to have done well for himself: No longer a lowly cop, he heads up a successful company housed in a sleek downtown office building, drives a Mercedes, has a sexy secretary named Kiya (Kangna Ranaut) and lives in a luxurious villa with his sizzling wife, Kamini (former model Mallika Sherawat).
The four idiots don’t see why they shouldn’t be able to move onto easy street with their old pal/nemesis, but things aren’t as they seem: Kabir isn’t rich at all—it’s his wife who has money and she expects him to make it work for them, legally or otherwise—and hotsy-totsy Kiya is actually Kabir’s sister and partner in crime. Various ridiculous complications later, the four fools have double-crossed a rapacious fake guru named Bata Bhai (Satish Kaushik); Kabir has double-crossed them; they’ve persuaded a cynical boat captain to take them to Macau by threatening mass suicide; and they discovered that Kabir, Kiya and Kamini are now also in Macau raking in the big bucks from a casino cruelly named “The Four Jokers.”
The real-life jokers in turn employ a series of ludicrous masquerades to get back at Kabir: Adi weasels his way into his confidence by playing a sharp Sikh named Ghantra Singh; Boman tries to seduce him in drag as celebutante Barbara Hori and endures the advances of an amorous gorilla; Manav pretends to be Barbara’s wealthy, cuckolded husband, a potential investor in the casino; and Roy plays a Chinese cardsharp and later wins Kiya’s heart in the guise of afroed cool cat Tukya Kale, whose heart of gold is revealed when Kiya learns that he’s caring for two mentally challenged siblings.Double Dhamaal is the Indian equivalent of an Adam Sandler comedy: coarse, sentimental, broad, generally good-natured and pretty accessible to an international audience. Sure, there are culturally specific puns and jokes that will fly right by U.S. viewers, but drag gags and close encounters with horny apes who are clearly men in mangy gorilla suits are part of the international language of low comedy. It's pretty damn dumb, but if you're looking to convince someone that "subtitled foreign-language movie" does not equal "art film," Double Dhamaal is Exhibit A.

Double Dhamaal Review by Taran Adarsh

Review by Taran Adarsh
23 June 2011

Yet another sequel of a well-liked franchise makes it to cineplexes; this one's helmed by Indra Kumar, the King of Melodrama. The challenge evidently lies in making DOUBLE DHAMAAL far more engaging, compelling and amusing than the first in this series. Right from DIL, his directorial debut, to DHAMAAL, his last outing, Indra Kumar has integrated a generous dose of light moments in all his films, irrespective of the genre. And he's got it right most of the times!
The four jokers [Arshad, Riteish, Javed, Aashish] reunite to cause a comic riot in the much-anticipated follow-up DOUBLE DHAMAAL. DHAMAAL was a laugh-riot and was, in fact, one of the earlier films that gave an impetus to the trend of attempting madcap entertainers.
A word of caution, though. It's outrageous and ridiculous... yet extremely funny and hugely entertaining. As we are well aware, the sole motive of a motion picture of the DOUBLE DHAMAAL variety is to entertain the viewer. Such nutty escapades are not fashioned to appease or mollify a miniscule minority of those viewers who are not in sync with the sensibilities and receptivity of a majority of moviegoers. DOUBLE DHAMAAL is also not for those who loathe and abominate desi masala movies and label them 'brain dead' or 'cheesy, low-brow humor'. All Time Blockbusters like DABANGG, GOLMAAL 3, even 3 IDIOTS and GHAJINI and more recently READY were not spared by the skeptics, but the audience mandate
proved the inflexible cynics wrong and how! Very evidently, DOUBLE DHAMAAL is targeted at the massive number of spectators who relish zany capers.
Packed with hilarious moments, amusing gags, witty one-liners and uproarious situational comedy, DOUBLE DHAMAAL lives up to its name and is in a league and genre of its own. It's double the fun and double the guffaws this time. The humor here is poles apart when compared to the MUNNABHAI or GOLMAAL series, yet the objective of each of those films has been to woo lovers of desi masala movies.

DOUBLE DHAMAAL works for varied reasons...

One, the jokes and gags are of a much enhanced quality. A few clutch-my-tummy-and-cackle situations are juxtaposed with the regular loud jesting without a glitch.

Two, the presence of the glam quotient spices up the proceedings [DHAMAAL was an all-male film]. In fact, both Mallika and Kangna are an integral part of the plot.

Three, it appears superior in terms of visuals and also production design. The dazzling locales of Macau are pure eye-candy. Most significantly, the highpoint of DOUBLE DHAMAAL isn't its script alone. Rather, it is also the imposing chemistry between the boys.

As a matter of fact, we've become so habituated to crudeness in the name of hilarity that we've forgotten to value uncontaminated comedies.

Which is why I want to roll out the carpet for DOUBLE DHAMAAL, which is a genuinely witty, plot-driven comedy. Sure, there are few double entendres, but they aren't detestable or distasteful. In fact, DOUBLE DHAMAAL is so asinine and goofy that you might want to forewarn people that they may fall off their chairs, guffawing at the most banal
jokes.
All said and done, DOUBLE DHAMAAL is an epidemic of laughter which has all it takes to take the franchise to the next level.
The four good-for-nothing jokers from DHAMAAL -- Roy [Ritesh Deshmukh], Adi [Arshad Warsi], Manav [Jaaved Jaaferi] and Boman [Aashish Chaudhry] -- are back again! They are still as stupid and useless as before. Hard work is a strict no and the only work they have ever done in their lives is to lie down on their backside and dream about a good life where they have everything without doing anything!And then suddenly they spot their enemy -- the corrupt Insp. Kabir Nayak [Sanjay Dutt]. But he's no longer a cop and instead of chasing crooks, he's chasing money -- driving a Merc, has a posh office and a lavish villa. The four mad caps are green with envy and decide that come what may, by hook or by crook, they will share Kabir's good fortune. And so they blackmail Kabir into making them his business partners.
What they don't know is that soon their dreams are going to turn into nightmares because Kabir has his own hidden agenda, only shared by his sultry girlfriend Kamini [Mallika Sherawat] and sister Kiya [Kangna Ranaut]. And so starts a game of one-upmanship, with both sides having tricks up their sleeves and where sundry characters like Batabhai [Satish Kaushik] and King of Casino, Bonzola, turn up to make their life miserable.
DOUBLE DHAMAAL sets in motion with a speedy recap of the first part, to facilitate those who may have watched it but don't recollect the film vividly or those who haven't watched the first part and are clueless about the characters. That helps in getting acquainted with the basic plot and characters at the very outset. In fact, the film takes off from exactly the same point where the prequel concluded.
DOUBLE DHAMAAL works primarily because it's an ingeniously written film that moves briskly from one gag to another, leaving no moment in between to contemplate. You may trace the jokes to some films of yore, but the manner in which these yarns are unified in the airtight screenplay [Tushar Hiranandani] merits an ovation.
Since the expectations are monstrous from this flick, Indra Kumar seems focused on meeting those expectations. The perfect execution of the script by the director combined with the brilliant comic timing of the actors assures you that the franchise is in safe hands. Also, I'd like to make a note of the witty, brilliant dialogues [Farhad-Sajid] that spice up the proceedings well. Music has always played an integral part in Indra Kumar's movies and though DHAMAAL didn't have a great soundtrack, DOUBLE DHAMAAL has two sprightly and infectious tracks [Anand Raaj Anand] that compliment the movie well -- the title track and 'Jalebi Bai'. Aseem Bajaj's cinematography is top notch. He captures the grandiose look on
celluloid splendidly.

This comic-and-wit contest is so intense that it is unfeasible to single out any one actor as the scene-stealer. Arshad, Riteish, Jaaved and Aashish are no aliens to tomfoolery and each one of them carries off their scenes with aplomb. Each of
them is a born-laugh-raiser, actually. Riteish is simply outstanding. It won't be wrong to state that this is his career-best work. Arshad's comic timing is amazing and it's evident yet again. Jaaved is super. It's a tough part to handle and he does it with amazing ease. Aashish is a complete revelation; he brings the house down with his act. The usage of prosthetics grants a lot of definition to this outrageously comical character. In fact, the four actors co-ordinate well to make the goings-on look flawless and unblemished. Also, the various getups and makeup of all the actors deserve a special mention.

Just as it's impossible to imagine GOLMAAL without Ajay, it's hard to think of DHAMAAL without Sanju. He's not so much a part of the comedy as he is the catalyst for much of it... and he's the best man for the job. Both Mallika and Kangna have key roles to play and don't come across as mere props. Mallika is excellent and this film will make people realize that she can handle comic roles with effortlessness. Kangna is equally competent and her scenes with Riteish are sure to be noticed. Satish Kaushik is in top form. In fact, he's bound to walk away with ceetees and taalis whenever he appears... also towards the end. Zakir Hussain is adequate.
On the whole, DOUBLE DHAMAAL is a seriously hilarious movie that lives up to its title -- it's double dhamaal all the way. If you are not looking for wisdom and rationale in a light-hearted entertainer, I am sure you will savor this carnival of claptrap. Sometimes, a good laugh is all you need to make your day. Try not to miss this one, it pledges hilarity in abundance... Carrying a positive vibe and a high degree of expectation, the film is tipped to be 'hot' amongst viewers and is likely to embark on a strong initial at the box-office. Here's hoping that the first half of 2011 closes on a dhamaal note with DOUBLE DHAMAAL.